Page 18 of Wolf Trial

I shrugged. “Let him. If he can’t—”

A group of students formed a block in the tight hallway ahead, and I sighed. Good thing we’d set off early. If our next tutor was anything like Reed, they’d make us fight to the death for being late.

Elix held up her pad. What’s happening?

“Good question,” I muttered.

It wasn’t just a crowd; there was an atmosphere. A buzzing tension. Either excitement or panic. The kind of energy that formed when someone was fighting. I was surprised they weren’t chanting it; fight, fight!

“What’s going on?” I asked the pigtailed slayer in front of me.

“No one knows,” she replied, but with a bubbling tone of excitement. “But look!”

I followed the direction of her hand to where the corridor fed out into a wide hall, staircases crisscrossing overhead. It was from the balustrade of one of these that a woman hung.

Brown hair draped around her shoulders, her face bloodied, her eyes open pits.

“Someone stole her eyes,” the girl in front of me added.

I wanted to grab her and throw her against the wall for her excited tone. That was a person who’d been killed, an innocent woman. Not gossip for the rumour mill.

“Oh, god,” Paige gasped when she saw the mutilated woman hanging from the staircase. “Fioranna.”

CHAPTER 11

SADIE

Inever did find out what our next class would have introduced us to because all afternoon sessions were cancelled. I still found it odd they called it afternoon when the sky was pitch black outside, and the real afternoon clearly happened while we all slept. If anything, this was the middle of the night. But we had worse problems than the dark sky; someone had killed one of us. No, not just killed. Mutilated. Her eyes cut out as a message, but one I had trouble interpreting.

If wolves couldn’t gain access to Lunova Academy, that meant Fioranna’s killer was human or vampire, and most likely a slayer. And probably still inside the building.

That explained why Sidonie gathered up all the new slayers and bade us to follow her like little ducklings down a long corridor, past the bat sculpture I was convinced would come to life, and through the rounded chamber where we were led yesterday, to a solid cherry-wood door.

Mortem’s crisp voice called for us to enter, and we were ushered inside. Not a single one of us was unrattled by the sight of Fioranna’s dead body hanging from the staircase, even if I was trying to act normal and Lawrence had set his sneer to its usual setting.

“There is reason,” Laura Mortem began the moment the door had snicked shut behind us, with Sidonie hovering in concern, “to believe the four of you might be at risk. Fioranna may have been targeted because she was a new recruit, as are you four. She was a full-blooded vampire, and would have been very difficult to kill, but you do not have that advantage.”

Great way to say we were weaklings and easy to pick off, one by one. I knitted my fingers together in front of me, gripping until my knuckles whitened.

“Do you know who killed her?” I asked, other questions burning in my chest. Are they still here? And when can I fucking leave?

She knitted her gloves hands together on the desk. “Professor Beaufort is leading an investigation, and I promise you it will be swift and ruthless. The culprit will be executed on the lawn for all to see.”

Making a spectacle was taking it a bit too far, but at least we’d be safe. And I supposed a school full of killers wouldn’t have lenient punishments.1

“I caution you to be on your guard,” Mortem added, as if that wasn’t common sense.

“How?” Paige blurted with a twisted laugh, her brown fingers knotted tight, knuckles light. “We just got here; we don’t have any training. I barely even know how to throw a punch, and I almost died out there. I was this close to death.” She held up her thumb and finger, a millimetre between them. “And you think I can hold my own against Fioranna’s killer? I don’t stand a chance.”

“Your training begins in earnest tomorrow,” Mortem replied, as if that was a comfort. Didn’t it take years to become a fully trained badass? “It will give you valuable skills you can use to defend yourself. I’ll make sure Reed’s lesson plan focuses on self-defence.”

So, an investigation and a self-defence class? Is that it? “What about bodyguards? Round-the-clock policing? Arming us with magical weapons so we can defend ourselves?”

“Magical weapons are rare,” Sidonie piped up. “Some of our vampire slayers have their own inherent magic, but it would be near-impossible to give everyone else a powerful artefact when there are very few in known existence and—”

“Thank you, Sidonie,” Mortem cut in, a twinkle in her eye. Something fond about the look she gave the flaxen-haired vampire. “Magical weapons are off the table. After your lesson tomorrow, you will be permitted one regular weapon. But if I catch you using them on other slayers instead of for your own personal protection…”

“Executed on the lawn?” I guessed, shifting my weight.